Swedish patient not infected with Ebola

Swedish medical authorities say a patient who was suspected of having Ebola has been tested and given the all clear.

The ebola virus

A suspected case of Ebola in Sweden has led to the sealing off of a small hospital. (AAP)

A patient in Sweden who was admitted to hospital with a suspected case of Ebola, was found not to be suffering from the highly infectious and potentially fatal disease, health care officials said Friday.

"The young man... who had symptoms... is not suffering from Ebola. That is what the result of tests shows," the health authorities in Uppsala, about 70 kilometres (45 miles) north of Stockholm, said in a statement

"The patient came in this morning. He was throwing up blood and had bloody stools," which can be a symptom of Ebola, Mikael Kohler, a medical director for Uppsala Region, told AFP earlier.

The young man, whose identity has not been released, lives in Sweden and had returned from a trip to Burundi three weeks ago but was not known to have visited any Ebola-contaminated area, Kohler said.

The symptoms first appeared on Friday morning.

An Ebola outbreak ravaging eastern areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed several hundred lives. It is the 10th such outbreak in the DRC since the disease was first detected there in 1976.

Ebola is a haemorrhagic fever that spreads rapidly by contact with the body fluids of an infected person, causing internal bleeding and potentially death.

Sweden has one specialised isolation unit able to treat patients with highly infectious diseases such as Ebola, located at Linkoping University Hospital some 200 kilometres (120 miles) southwest of Stockholm.


Share

2 min read

Published

Updated

Source: AFP, SBS



Share this with family and friends


Get SBS News daily and direct to your Inbox

Sign up now for the latest news from Australia and around the world direct to your inbox.

By subscribing, you agree to SBS’s terms of service and privacy policy including receiving email updates from SBS.

Download our apps
SBS News
SBS Audio
SBS On Demand

Listen to our podcasts
An overview of the day's top stories from SBS News
Interviews and feature reports from SBS News
Your daily ten minute finance and business news wrap with SBS Finance Editor Ricardo Gonçalves.
A daily five minute news wrap for English learners and people with disability
Get the latest with our News podcasts on your favourite podcast apps.

Watch on SBS
SBS World News

SBS World News

Take a global view with Australia's most comprehensive world news service
Watch the latest news videos from Australia and across the world